Template talk:Map

The levels category is too big, imho, and not useful. Before I remove Category:Levels from this template, I just thought I'd see if there were any objections. I think levels/maps/pwads should be manually marked with applicable categories (2003 Wads, for example) and only be in a generic category like 'Levels' if there is nothing more specific.


 * Yeah, categories should be as specific as possible. Fredrik 17:16, 13 Jan 2006 (UTC)


 * As a general rule, yes, but I don't think it's the best solution for walkthrough articles. The way we have it set up now, if a player downloads/finds a PWAD somewhere and only knows its DOS filename &mdash; no readme file, no idgames page, nothing &mdash; can they find our walkthrough in a straightforward way?  I would say no.


 * List of WADs is organized by "long form" title (and some people have suggested deleting that article anyway), the "map slot" method doesn't help much because practically everything is in Category:MAP01, and the other types of subcategories are based on information of purely historical interest, like the author's name or the year of release. Therefore, I think an alphabetical list should still be maintained.  Call it Category:WADs by name, and split it into as many subcategories as necessary to get them under 200 names each (if short lists are that important).  Such structures are common on wikipedia AFAICT.    Ryan W 14:29, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Include "Category:" in link name?
Currently, the template produces text that reads, for example, "This level occupies the map slot MAP31. For other maps which occupy this slot, see MAP31." The problem is that this looks pretty silly if you got there from typing "MAP31" in the first place, i.e., it produces a reaction like, "See MAP31? I just got here from going to the page titled MAP31!" If you click or mouseover the link, you'll see it's Category:MAP31, which is a different title. I think the message should include the "Category:" part, so it reads "For other maps which occupy this slot, see Category:MAP31," which is more accurate. What do you guys think? - furrykef (Talk at me) 18:27, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I could live with that. I think we've already done similar things in other articles.    Ryan W 20:58, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Single-level PWADs
Code to suppress automatic categorization (which I deliberately didn't fix for single-level mods that also had a prominent release as part of a megawad, e.g. No Brakes and Thematic Elements) is taken from the example here. Ryan W 03:58, February 22, 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetization
One drawback of automatic categorization, of course, is that the template doesn't check for map titles beginning with "The" or "A". :7   Ryan W 05:10, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Well if you're not happy you can now use the "name" parameter. :) --Gez 09:31, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * *blink* ...And you say you're not good with MediaWiki markup??  Wow.  :D     Ryan W 12:21, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposal to automatically drop articles from sortkeys in this and related templates

 * See User talk:Ryan W/Sandbox/Template:Mapsortkey.   Ryan W (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2015 (CDT)

Explanation of edit in July 2017
This summary isn't terribly helpful, sorry. The edit causes the template to avoid auto-categorization when used outside article space. Because it is clearly designed for article space only, such usage was assumed to add clutter to content categories, specifically with Template:Map skel which is often used by non-regulars. In general we want "casual" content edits to be very straightforward, not requiring tabbed browsing or other workarounds. Ryan W (living fossil) 10:49, 10 November 2017 (CST)

Sorting of unnamed maps, March 2018
I am currently testing the change described here. Also removing an instance of  which should be a no-op according to the documentation. Ryan W (living fossil) 11:18, 11 March 2018 (CDT)

Highly Scientific Plan: Ryan W (living fossil) 12:19, 11 March 2018 (CDT)
 * 1) &#x2714; Change markup in /test template subpage
 * 2) &#x2714; Test the /test template on one mod (need multiple maps to verify that the slot sort key also works)
 * 3) &#x2714; Test the /test template on a few articles that SHOULDN'T be affected, and confirm that categorization and sorting didn't change
 * 4) &#x2714; Revert the edits in the previous 2 steps
 * 5) &#x2714; Update category description (see talk thread linked above)
 * 6) &#x2714; Update template parameter documentation
 * 7) &#x2714; Change live template
 * 8) &#x2714; Wait a while to see if it worked (there are far too many transclusions to manually update category links in this case)

All done except that, naturally, mod names starting with "The" needed a manual tweak. I think that is caused by the  parameter trying to do two things at once: flag single-level mods and flag mods without individual map names. I could code around that in the template, but only by rewriting it from scratch. Or we could split that parameter into two parameters, which is conceptually clearer, but more complication for casual contributors and changes to the bot and (probably) an extra bot run to update all the existing cases. Either way seems like too much effort for a comparative handful of maps, IMO. Ryan W (living fossil) 20:57, 11 March 2018 (CDT)


 * Changes to the template's parameters would require updating navboxBot.php (and possibly DMMPST and its skeleton.tpl), and indeed rerun that script across several thousands map pages. While feasible, that would still be very time-consuming. And XymphBot currently doesn't cover DM map series, so WADs like 32 in 24 and 32in24-5 would need to be checked manually. Yes, not worth it. --Xymph (talk) 03:57, 12 March 2018 (CDT)